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Dix’s dodging, ducking and dancing sullies smooth performance: Palmer

NDP leader gives a swell speech at UBCM but stumbles over budget at sweat-inducing scrum

Adrian Dix gave a near-flawless speech at the Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention Thursday, but things went sideways in front of a media scrum.

VICTORIA — Cool as ever, New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix breezed into the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention Thursday morning to deliver the annual speech on behalf of the official Opposition.

No handlers. No prepared text. For all the scrutiny that the opinion-poll-leading Dix is getting these days, he appears not to have a care about drifting off message or uttering a gaffe.

Not to say that an audience of local government leaders poses no risks for NDP leaders. During the party’s days in government in the 1990s, its premiers got a rough ride at several UBCM conventions.

New Democrats would sooner not recall what happened when Dix’s predecessor, Carole James, addressed the union in Whistler two years ago this week. She was attacked by one of her own MLAs for a lacklustre speech, setting in motion the bitter train of events that led to her resignation two months later.

But the current lineup of municipal leaders, being able to read the opinion polls as well as anyone, were friendly and receptive, and Dix did not disappoint.

He opened with a couple of mild shots at the B.C. Liberals, one for not calling the legislature into session (“It’s great when MLAs get together in the fall”) the second for their attack ads: “They are running out of opportunities to rhyme or do double entendres with my name.”

That said, all provincial party leaders need to show more respect to their opponents, he said, underscoring the point by praising each of his political rivals in turn: “It serves no purpose to tear down these good people personally and I’m not going to do it.”

Local leaders cheered his promise to return a measure of autonomy to public-private partnerships and resort development, appointments to the TransLink board, and an industry-led tourism agency.

Reiterating earlier promises to restore corporate income tax rates to 2008 levels, meaning to 12 per cent from the current 10, he said some of the revenue increase would be pledged for transit, the rest for municipal infrastructure.

Not a huge tax grab: about $200 million a year as I make it. Nor did Dix depart from his recent message to business leaders that his priorities would be “a thriving economy led by the private sector” and an emphasis on skills upgrading and higher education as the route to more opportunity for all.

He closed with a nod to the encouraging numbers in the opinion polls, all the while maintaining that the government’s flawed record alone won’t decide the outcome: “The NDP needs to earn the support of people.”

A well-constructed speech that earned him a standing ovation from two-thirds to three-quarters of the delegates in the packed hall. Then he exited to a media scrum, where things went a bit sideways for him.

As is usually the case with Dix these days, the questions focused on what he and his colleagues would do if they form the next government.

Dix repeated that his would be a “no surprises government,” its agenda shaped by the “fully costed” election platform he’ll be releasing in the first quarter of 2013.

As is also standard fare these days, he said he won’t be costing promises until after the mid-February release of the provincial budget, with its updated figures on revenues and program costs.”I am not going to table a budget before the government does.”

But what about more general matters? For instance, would a Dix-led government even attempt to balance the budget?

The question brought a wave of scorn directed at the B.C. Liberals for their “Monty Python sketch” handling of the existing balanced budget legislation, the Liberals having repeatedly amended the terms to allow themselves to run deficits.

Fair comment. For the past few years, the Liberal balanced budget law has been more respected in the breach than in the observance. But what would Dix do?

“I would rather have balanced budgets than balanced budget laws,” making it clear that he supported balancing the budget over a four-year cycle, not every year as required by the current law.

All of which made it sound as if the Dix-led the New Democrats would repeal the balanced budget law, should the polls hold and they win the next election.

Dix was already on record as opposing an earlier version of the balanced budget legislation, enacted by the previous NDP government a dozen years ago. Dix, then working as a media pundit denounced the measure in the Victoria Times Colonist as “politically toxic,” a “political loser” and “simply a bad law.”

But when reporters asked Dix Thursday about the possible fate of the current legislation — would he repeal it? — the NDP leader did everything he could to duck, bob, sidestep and otherwise avoid answering the question.

By my reckoning it took 18 questions from six different journalists before it was finally, conclusively nailed down that “yes,” an NDP government would repeal the balanced budget legislation.

But the end of that session of Dancing with Dix, the no-longer cool NDP leader had worked up a sweat, something I’d not seen before in his scrums. And all because of an apparent reluctance to provide a direct answer to a simple question.

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